Thankful Thursday

"Don't burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame.  Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant.  Don't quit in hard times; pray all the harder."

~Romans 12:11-12 (MSG)

Happy Thankful Thursday!  I'm feeling a little bit more upbeat this week.  Last week was definitely very hard for me, but I'm thankful for awesome loved ones and friends who checked in on me to make sure that I was okay.  It's hard to come to terms with the fact that a person you loved is no longer with you no matter how many years fly by.

When I say that JJ has turned into a chatterbox, I mean it.  He's learned how to put together some simple phrases and sentences and he talks my head off turning the day now.  This takes a bit of getting used to because it still feels so surreal.  I've said this before, but when we first got his diagnosis, I thought it was the end of the world.  Even though I knew it wasn't my fault, I couldn't help feeling like a total mom failure.

However, being very proactive in helping to get on par with his speech and seeing all of the progress he has made has helped me just as much as it's helped him.  This has been quite the journey for us as a family.  Seeing where he is now compared to where he started is almost like night and day.  I'm so thankful that we've all been able to be here for JJ during all this, giving him the support and encouragement he needs.

He's so much more confident in his speech and I love it.  Speaking of love, he can finally say "I love you, too" back to us!!  I cried buckets the first time he said it.  We were just hanging out on the couch and he gave me the biggest hug.  And since I make it a habit of telling him that I love him at the most random times, I wasn't expecting him to say anything back that when I told him.  I must have made him repeat it like a million times and now it's become our family ritual.

Moo won the Math Excellence awards again this nine weeks at her school!  I'm so proud of my little math whiz.  Also, after meeting with her teacher, I found out that she's more than passed her end of the year reading goals and is one point away from passing her math goal.  They tested students at the beginning of the school year and based on the results set a specific testing score/point value that each student should be at.  They test them at the end of each nine weeks and at the end of the last nine weeks, Moo had pretty much achieved all of her goals.

I'm very proud of her.  And I adore her new teacher!!  She's keeping my baby challenged in class so that she doesn't get bored and I appreciate that because I want Moo to always have a thirst for learning.  And sometimes when kids are a bit ahead of the rest of their class but they don't get challenged, they get bored with learning.  

I'm grateful this week for a break.  We've had the Mr to ourselves for a full seven days and we're not looking forward to sharing him with his job again.  The kids are going to miss having him home for dinner and I'm going to miss our late night couple time.   But I think he noticed that I was nearing my burn out and he's been awesome- entertaining the kids for a few hours, handling dinner and taking over picking up Moo from school in the afternoons.

What are you thankful for this week?